Lighting systems are commonly used in commercial, industrial, communal, and residential settings. Lighting systems generally comprise a housing, an interior light source, a power supply, and a sign face. Lighting systems serve a wide variety of purposes. For example, they may be used as primary signage on the outside of a location. Examples of primary signage are pylons, monuments, wall cabinets, multi-tenant sign panels, letters, soffit bands, canopies, and buildings, surrounds, towers, and toppers of automated telling machines (“ATM”). Secondary signage, such as directional signs, regulatory signs, plaques, lane indicators, and open/close signs, are smaller and generally found throughout a location. Interior signage, as its name suggests, is found in the inside of a location. Examples of interior signage are interior mall signs, customer contact zone signs, digital portraits, wall coverings, vinyl displays, vestibules, teller area, cubicle panels, office signs, hanging window posters, online & telephone kiosks, directional signs, and welcome signs.
One issue with maintaining a lighting system is accessing the interior light source of the lighting system when the top, bottom, sides, and rear of the lighting system are substantially or entirely restricted, and moving or removing the sign face of the lighting system would be cost prohibitive, time consuming, highly impractical, or otherwise undesirable.
By way of example, traditional full wall mounted lighting systems require rear doors or panels to access its interior light source. The ceiling, floor, and adjacent walls of a room, for example, restrict access to the top, bottom, and sides of the full wall mounted lighting system. The front is restricted by fixed sign faces made of glass or plastic. Fixed sign faces are attached by means of channel extrusions or mullions, because other means of attachment such as screws or bolts are undesirable and aesthetically displeasing. Removing and reinstalling fixed sign faces require specialized workers, specialized tools, a significant time commitment, and, in some cases, governmental work permits. The costly and time consuming process requires specialized workers known as glazers to remove sign faces from the extrusions or mullions using specialized tools such as suction cup grips; separate maintenance personnel to service the interior light source; and glazers to reinstall the sign faces into the extrusions or mullions and, for example, re-caulks seems.
Accordingly, full wall mounted lighting systems require access to rear doors or panels of the lighting system to service the light source. Because access to rear doors or panels is generally provided through an adjacent room, full wall mounted lighting systems are not installed on exterior walls, walls adjacent to other tenants, or existing walls made, for example, of concrete, granite, concrete masonry unit (“CMU”), or brick.